Moth-Eaten Sweaters and Sporadic Overtures
by Watanabe Maya
Summary: "Matthew had fallen in love with him then, thrice even, but never at the right time." / human AU. lonely EngCan with tidbits of other pairings.
1. The Beginning's the End is the Beginning

Hello again, everyone! Here is yet another attempt of mine to write a multi-chapter fic, lol. I've been reading a bunch of fics throughout summer, and I was greatly struck by General Relativity (on lj) and The Selfish Sickness (here on ff) -_ohmygod guys they were so beautiful you should check them out you won't regret it holycrap -_ that I was inspired to write another story centered on Canada. It's an AU, and makes use of their human names; there is roughly a 3-year age gap between Canada and his brother, America - who is the same in age as England. Initially, I had planned for this to be a oneshot, but well, a lot of relationships start, stop, fade, and intertwine in here so it probably would've been a very loooooong one then hahaha (But even now I'm not entirely sure of how things would work out, I've got a whirlwind of a plot running through my mind and I'm still at a loss at how to follow through with everything hahaha).

Many thanks to the wonderful Whaddapack, my super loyal as fuck guy best friend who tolerated the brewing slash just to help serve as my beta :D HI DUDE IF YOU EVER SEE THIS PLEASE KNOW THAT I LOVE YOU (...as a bro ok) HAHAHAHA. MY GRATITUDE HAS BUT NO BOUNDS.

On a side note, omg guys has anyone here watched About Time? Domhnall Gleeson plays the lead role of Tim Lake and he kinda reminds me of Arthur Kirkland there with his lanky limbs and semi-thick brows and British accent asjkdbglaisfhwq AHAHAHA I absolutely adored it. It's kinda sad but it's also kinda sweet and I liked the musical score quite a bit. :D

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Hetalia. All rights belong to Hima-papa.

* * *

The first time Matthew Williams falls in love, it is with a boy a tad bit older than his age, with thick brows and golden hair and eyes the colour of kelp. He is his brother's playmate (well, step-brother's, if one were to question the difference in their surnames, as his mother decided it would be better for Matthew not to change his family name in honour of his deceased father) and has always been distant and reserved, quite the opposite of Alfred's loud and boisterous nature.

He meets him a month after moving in to the Jones' residence.

Matthew, having taken after his father's weak constitution, is in bed with what seems to be the flu, his raging fever dancing dangerously between the degrees of thirty-eight and thirty-nine. The room is spinning fast around him, enough to tempt him to grab hold of the 'sick bowl' lying on his night table, but that would mean letting go of Kuma—_chiro? Kumakichi? He's too sick to remember properly – _and he doesn't want to spend even a single moment without his only friend by his side. Instead, he focuses his eyes languidly on some indefinite point on the ceiling, clutching onto the white bear tightly in his arms, like an anchor against the stormy sea, waves of nausea washing over him as his consciousness faded and returned, vision blurring in and out and in and out and in and out and in and –

_"Alfred!"_ he hears someone call out as the door bursts open, the sudden noise startling the ailing child from his whirling thoughts. A child enters the room and hurriedly hastens towards his bed, crouching down low to peek underneath the frame. "_Are you in here—_oh."Wide emeralds meet confused amethysts, the owner of the voice as equally surprised as the owner of the room.

"I'm sorry! I did not know that someone was occupying this—"

"No, uhm, it's all right… " Matthew offers a faint smile. People usually forgot about him anyway, it didn't really matter that much. He had gotten used to it by now.

"You must be Alfred's new brother," the stranger interrupts him then, "M-Ma…Max…er, Mark…no, uhm…Matthew, right?"

"Who?" the Canadian inquires, his weary eight-year-old mind too tired to process the hasty jumble of the older boy's previous words.

"You are _Matthew_, aren't you?" he repeats, more smoothly this time.

And Matthew blinks, surprised that someone else had actually been aware of his existence beforehand. It's a nice feeling, though, to be genuinely noticed for once. There's a hint of a blush creeping up his skin, but neither of them notice due to the pre-existent tinge of the Matthew's fever-flushed cheeks.

He opens his mouth to affirm the stranger, but a cough escapes his lips and rattles his weakened frame. Matthew's answer is only reduced to a simple nod.

"You must feel terrible," the boy remarks. "That cough sounds horrid."

"Sorry," Matthew manages to croak out, forcing the words amidst the soreness of his throat.

"No need to apologize." A thin hand snakes itself up his forehead, smoothing out the wisps of his bangs before falling to his neck and then up again to rest on his cheek. Matthew feels his temperature skyrocket at his touch. "You should probably get some rest, then. And, um, your brother is probably still waiting to be found – we were playing hide-and-seek, you see – so I should probably leave now. I'm sorry for the intrusion."

Matthew offers him a tiny wave as he makes his way towards the exit.

"It was nice meeting you, Matthew," he hears him say last before the door clicks to a close.

The fluttering in his stomach is a pleasant one this time, the nausea he had suffered from moments earlier miraculously vanishing as a smile tugs on the corners of his lips. Matthew is drowsy now, so he settles himself by sinking back down in his sheets and tucking the polar bear at his side.

He never quite catches the boy's name, but he contents himself with the fact that it is nothing more than a simple, innocent crush. Nevertheless, the memory of their meeting is enough to cure the child of his ails that night.

Sometimes, Matthew wonders, if perhaps, maybe, meeting _him _had only just been a dream.

Most other times, however, he reminds himself that it isn't.

* * *

keeping things happy and fluffy while i still can hehe :3

**please do leave a review, they make my day and i super love them just as i love you guys.** not to worry, I'll be updating this one soon hehe :D


	2. Lost Scene

Sorry for the wait, I started having review classes for the summer and oh god they sure are boring. You'd think that at least having a friend _(and your crush/special guy whatever HAHAHA_) together with you would help make things better but nope, those classes still suck. I'm starting to hate them now, actually. Not 'cause of the lectures, but more so because of the monotony and boring nature of how we have to spend our breaks. Ugh._ ((And on an even more bitter note, jealousy, the green-eyed monster, is a terrible terrible thing. God, I hate myself sometimes.))_

My beta suggested to do something like this, but he didn't get to proofread and beta this particular chapter.

Well anyway, here's hoping things work out better in the long run. Happy reading and please do leave a review. I'm not lying when I tell you that they really do make my day. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Hetalia.

* * *

Matthew never really understood the concept of opposite gender roles.

Well, sure, he gets it in the biological sense – they've had science classes and he learned about anatomy and hormones and all that – but the young boy never really saw the importance of it besides helping people pick out their outfits or how to style their hair. Having gender determine whether it would be socially acceptable for him to like someone or not would be far too difficult and complex for his poor ten-year-old brain to even fathom or simply imagine.

He simply takes people as they are, the choice of liking them based solely on their personality and the entirety of their being. It's simply the right way, he thinks. Just. Impartial. Fair.

Which is why he finds it strange – and horrifyingly upsetting – that when he received a tulip of affection from his seatmate Ned, two days before Valentine's, the whole class had laughed and ridiculed them with barbs of "_faggot!", "gay!", "disgusting!", and "homo!". _

Matthew smiles but turns him down, hoping to quell the rumors and gossip blathered by his peers.

They stop talking to each other after that.

(It's a shame, really. He liked Ned. He was a nice-enough guy.)

The bullying stops after a while.

A month after the incident, when the students have reached a ceasefire to their insulting remarks, a classmate approaches him sometime between second and third period and asks for his time. It's a girl with a round face and even rounder eyes, her hair long and styled in a plaited up-do. Her name is Katyusha, and she is an exchange student from Ukraine.

She tells him that she has a crush on him, and may possibly even be in love with him, then asks if he could go out with her. Matthew doesn't exactly reciprocate her feelings in same way, but he's too nice to bring himself to refuse her offer. He leads her up the garden path – not intentionally, of course – and contributes to the cultivation of her emotions. She starts eating lunch together with him on that day, and the day after that, and the day after that. They sit together on the cafeteria bench at the far end of the hall, sometimes across, sometimes beside each other.

There was a time, Matthew remembers, when she'd been bold enough to grab hold of his hand as it rested on the bench surface, intertwining their fingers as their hands hung low between their laps, the action subtle and discreet and hidden by the berm of the table. It was like a secret, a guilty pleasure she indulged in on her very own; the dash of pink that dusted her cheeks as she averted her eyes had been her only giveaway.

But for Matthew, this means something else entirely. Instead, his mind is left to wander and he compares the feelings of his past with their present: the smallness of her palm and the thickness of her fingers so different from the hand that felt his forehead many years ago; but the warmth of her skin, edged with nervous trepidation, is similar to the one of the boy's, though he notices that her touch was more calloused and had not been as gentle.

A week later, she is sporting a new haircut, her now-short blonde hair fashioned with hairclips and bedizened with a thick solitary band. She turns to face him during lunch again, asking him for his opinion on her appearance.

But Matthew can only look back and think of an unruly mop of hair, blonde still but more vibrant in shade; and as her bright teal eyes gaze deeper into his while awaiting for his answer, he finds himself instead, desperately seeking the most peculiar shade of jade-and-moss green.

And_ oh god, _Matthew thinks,_ it just isn't fair._

_It isn't fair to her._

He shouldn't be doing this, Matthew realizes then. Katyusha is a nice girl, and she deserved an even nicer guy who would repay her affections with sincerity and genuine emotion. So the Canadian simply tells her that it's fine, and waits another week before he asks her as nicely, as carefully, and as cautiously as he can, that they resume to being just-friends once again. He says sorry for everything, too.

She says that it's okay, and that she'd like to remain as friends with him as well. Young as they are, though wise beyond their years, both of them know better than to place hope in a false dawn. You can never really go back to being just-friends with someone you've been "together" with at the end of an affair. Things never work out the way you want them to be in life.

So they simply smile at each other, expressions awkward and weary, agreeing upon false civilities and contenting themselves with the politeness of their façade.

(Dealing with her brother, however, had been an entirely different story. Ivan was younger than him, sure, but that did not stop him from exuding an aura of complete and utter terror, towering over Matthew a good eight inches and subjecting him to his hardened gaze, complete with a cold smile and even colder eyes.)

Many would consider that this would be Matthew's first – and quickest, after lasting not even a month but a mere three weeks – relationship ever, but the boy would strongly detest this notion and say otherwise.

He liked her, yes, but he didn't _love_ her.

So that time, for Matthew, doesn't really count.

* * *

Canada has great political relations with Ukraine, and Netherlands really does have a tradition of giving Canada flowers. In 1945, the Dutch royal family sent 10,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa in gratitude for Canadians having sheltered Princess Juliana and her daughters for the preceding three years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, in the Second World War. In 1946, Juliana sent another 20,500 bulbs requesting that a display be created for the hospital, and promised to send 10,000 more bulbs each year. :D [src: wiki]

The next installation/chapter is probably gonna be really long so the wait for that will most likely be even longer. Just one more week of review classes and then I'll be resuming my break so just hold out a little longer please and I'll work hard to update this soon. I have another story coming up as well, which, hopefully, I can upload within the week. :D

R&R please and thank you!


	3. Lull and Storm

**here's a long chapter to make up for my absence. sorry for the wait!**

**Disclaimer:** i don't own hetalia.

* * *

The second time Matthew falls in love, he is twelve; on the cusp of entering his teenage years.

It happens in the summer, early into June, three weeks before his birthday. The boys are hosting a sleepover, the parents allowing the best friends of both children to stay for the night. Each son, as per their rules, would be allowed to invite one guest to receive the privilege of being invited into their home.

Alfred, naturally, begs their parents to allow him to invite three of his friends instead of just one. Marianne scoffs and Franklin sighs, but both of them concede to his whims in the end, anyway. Grandpa George chuckles, commenting something about Alfred's sprightly nature and the millstones of parenting, before he resumes to reading another one of his civil war books, contented with his smoking pipe and rocking chair.

Matthew has decided to pick Gilbert – a German boy who claims that he is instead, Prussian, with his albino features, white skin, and crimson red eyes. Alfred asks him if he would like to invite anyone else, just to be fair, and Matthew thinks about the boy who visited his bedside before, wants to ask Alfred if he's willing to tell Matthew the boy's name, if they're still close friends, and if he's planning to invite him to their house as well. But the Canadian shakes his head politely, not wanting to push his luck, and contents himself with crossing his fingers for the last wish that he pondered over in his mind.

When the night of the sleepover finally falls upon them, Matthew's wish is granted, but by some cruel twist of fate, not in the way he expects it to be.

The guests arrive just in time for dinner. The first is a Japanese boy named Kiku, who knocks politely on the door even after ringing the bell and bows immediately at the sight of Alfred's parents. He thanks them for their kindness as they usher him inside – Alfred is still taking a shower, so he can't exactly attend to the guests at the moment – and even offers Matthew a bow as the Canadian boy peeks over the edge of his novel. Matthew nods politely and decides to head to the kitchen and help his mother set the table.

The second guest is a French one named Francis. He has blonde hair and violet eyes, and Matthew wonders if one day, he'll look like him too when he grows older. Francis enters in a rather grand manner, greeting Franklin with a quick but smooth "_Bonjour, Monsieur Jones!" _as he dropped his duffel bag by the doorway before sauntering over to the kitchen counter – just barely missing Matthew, had the Canadian not backed away– to kiss the hand of Marianne with a gentlemanly flourish. "And it is _ah… _a pleasure to see you, _Madame." _

Marianne giggles, pleasantly surprised, before Alfred decides to enter the room right at this very moment. Hair dripping, still uncombed with his cowlick sticking up, towel wrung round his neck – fresh out of the shower.

"Ew, Francis," the American remarks. "Quit bein' gross and get your hands off my mom. Not cool."

"_Non!" _his friend retorts, answering back. "I was not being gross."

"Nu-uh!" Alfred points an accusatory finger at his friend. "You were _so _hitting on my mom, dude. That's totally gross."

"_N'importe quoi_," Marianne speaks up. "Your friend Francis did not hit me," the French woman tries to explain to the teen, not quite seeing the difference between being hit and being hit _on, _as she had not been well versed in American slang. "He only came to greet me. I am sure he was only being polite."

"Ugh. Fine," Alfred acquiesces, not bothering to explain the meanings of the two terms to his mother. He turns to his friend, sticking his tongue out at the Frenchman. "Not cool, Frannie."

Francis smirks at his defense.

"Let's just go," he ushers his friend out of the kitchen. "Call us when dinner's ready."

"Just give it ten more minutes," his mother replies. "You can wait in the living room with your friends."

"Nah. We'll just go upstairs and hang out in my room. See ya, Mattie!" Alfred hollers with an off-handed wave.

"Okay," Matthew waves back.

The doorbell rings soon afterwards, and Matthew takes it upon himself to open the door instead since his mother is preoccupied with adjusting the knobs on the oven. He is greeted with the sight of a boy in dark denim jeans, union jack-printed tee, studded belt, high-cut Converse shoes, every inch of his outfit screaming punk.

But what grabs hold of Matthew's attention are his bright emerald eyes, and of course, signature thick eyebrows.

"'Ello there."

Oh, and his accent is British, too.

The Canadian boy stares, unblinking, trapped in a daze of the memory of the boy from the past.

"Uhm." There is an awkward cough, and the Briton steadies the backpack slung on his shoulders, shoving his free hand into his pocket. "May I step inside?"

"Oh! Ah, yes of course! S-s-sorry!" Matthew jolts out of his stunned stupor, apologizing profusely and stepping aside to make way for the guest. "You must be here for Alfred. He's upstairs with everyone else…I mean, with Francis and Kiku, uhm, yeah…sorry, you are…?"

"Arthur!" Marianne answers for him as she calls out from the kitchen. "It's nice to see you again, dear. Come in! Come in!"

"Good evening, Mrs. Jones," the British boy smiles, offering a curt but polite nod towards both parents, "Mr Jones."

He turns to Matthew, the ghost of a smile still on his face. "And to you as well, Matthew."

And he feels it again, a fluttering in his stomach, very much warm and a slightly bit euphoric; then right on cue, the doorbell rings, and Matthew runs to the entrance hastily, looking away from Arthur in order to conceal his flustered expression.

"Hey," Gilbert says, flashing him a toothy grin. "Sorry I was late. The awesome me has finally arrived!"

Matthew greets him with one of his brightest smiles. Gilbert's timing couldn't have been any more perfect.

They have dinner after that. Matthew doesn't remember much else besides his mother's delicious _poutine _and the fact that Arthur had been sitting exactly two seats away from him on the dinner table. The evening passes by in a quick blur.

And even though everyone knows that you don't really sleep in a sleepover, just as how everyone knows that the sun is a star and not a planet, Gilbert, being Gilbert, manages to defy that very fact and promptly conks out on Matthew's bed as soon as the TV begins airing the credits of _Mystery, Alaska._ (It was either this or _Les Boys; _Gilbert couldn't be bothered to understand French for a single run of a two-hour movie, and Matthew didn't have much else in his humble collection of hockey-centred movies.)

Matthew takes it upon himself to clear out their mess of junk food wrappers and soda cans, draping a blanket over his friend and heading to the kitchen downstairs to grab a light drink – maybe some hot chocolate with a dash of maple syrup? – before going to bed. It's a quarter to one in the morning, the house is dimly lit in an eerie light, but Matthew steels himself to continue his mission.

Somewhere in the distance at the end of the hallway, Matthew can vaguely hear the sound of two voices, hushed, panting, and forcibly quiet.

"You suck at this, you bloody frog."

A breathy chuckle.

"You say that but you aren't showing any signs of letting me go, _mon lapin."_

"Oh do shut u—"

The words are cut off abruptly by what Matthew witnesses next, a passionate kiss shared in the midst of the locking of lips. Francis' back is facing Matthew, hunched over a smaller figure, while a mop of blonde hair peeks out from over the taller boy's shoulder. The two part ways to take a breath then, blonde lashes fluttering slightly as green eyes crack open, catching sight of the Canadian child almost immediately.

And Matthew simply stares on, eyes as wide as saucers, lips pursed in an attempt to keep quiet.

Arthur raises a finger to his lips then – _hush, child, it's our secret, you see –_ casting the boy a quick glance and an arched brow before returning his sly gaze to the Frenchman.

_Sorry, _Matthew manages to mouth back, before he bolts out the room faster than his legs can carry him, his lungs ready to collapse and his chest burning like on fire. He reaches his bedroom and slams the door shut, loud enough to wake Gilbert, sinking down to the ground as he breaks out in cold sweat.

"Woah, birdie! What happened to you? Did'ya see a ghost or something?"

Matthew breathes and sucks the air back into his lungs, shaking his head before turning to his friend. There is a quiver in his lips, a knot in his stomach, and a tightness in his chest, but he knows none of these are from the running he did seconds before.

"What's the matter?" Gilbert says, his tone hushed and laden with concern.

But the tears spill out faster than Matthew can say anything else, so Gilbert picks him up, drags him to bed, and lets the Canadian cry his heart out for a good solid forty minutes.

Needless to say, the memory of this love had not been so sweet.

* * *

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